A Little Help... Non-Supernatural Vampirism (for a possible story)

So, basically... I have this idea for a vampire tale. A really dark, twisted one. I mean, the story's not original, but if I can find someone who's really good at writing horror/drama/thriller movie scripts (I can't put pen to paper except to write the occasional song... and I really don't want it to be cheesey), it could be a cool idea... I should point out, as I did below, that what I'm looking for here is not the plot to the story. This is just a side thing that'll (I hope) get answered in little snippets throughout the movie. The point here isn't generating a plot, but giving them a scientific explanation.

Anyways, there are certain things about the vampire lore I want to keep, and certain things I want to throw away.

The first and foremost thing is to get rid of the whole supernatural stigma. Religious symbols don't (a)(e)ffect(sp?) them and so on. And neither does the sun. They don't have the power to turn into other creatures. They can't fly. They can't disappear into thin air. It also doesn't change their personality. In other words, if Ghandi had been turned into a vampire, aside from needing to drink blood, he'd still be Ghandi. A philanthropist-turned-vampire is still a philanthropist. A serial-killer-turned-vampire is still a serial killer. In this scenario, your doctor may be a vampire.

And they don't all drink human blood... and many don't even drink real blood, but buy synthetic blood that does just fine.

Also, they can eat regular food and drink regular drinks. In other words, unless they need to drink blood, they're pretty much indistinguishable from your average Joe... with some exceptions.

I do want to keep the whole super strength/super speed thing. Also, the whole immortal (or aging-really-slow) and the down-right impossible to kill (not even the stake through the heart or cutting of their head works) aspect would be nice to keep, too, if feasible scientifically (this is ultra important... I'll throw those last two out if there can't be a logical scientific explanation of them).

So what do y'all think? A virus? I'm thinking a virus that is actually somewhat contagious. It can be spread through any kind of exchange of body fluids, with activation of the virus happening when the person is nearly dead (like, for example, you're the bartender, a vampire [though you don't know it] comes up and orders a drink... he doesn't finish it, and you're thirsty, so when no one's looking you shoot it back... later that night, you walk outside, get hit by a car, and next thing you know, you're a vampire). That's why, here, if a vampire doesn't drain a victim completely, they'll turn. Maybe there'll be a short side-note about someone (perhaps a scientist--turned-vampire) looking for a cure.

Any thoughts on how it could be explained naturally/scientifically? I know movies have touched on it before, but never in any way that's been realistic (from my experience). I want this to be realistic... you know... almost as if it could actually happen...

"Well, technically if we allow them to have this regrowth capacity they could also - by stretching it a bit - regrow a full head... but I guess you'd have to allow them some time to do this."

The way I was thinking it is that if you keep the head and body apart, you're okay (the head'll still be alive, but the body essentially dead). If you put them close enough, however, the head'll reattach itself to the body (sort of like how the detective manages to reattach his neck and lower jaw... read the really long post below). That was going to be the reason she burns his body after ripping the head off. Again, though, I have no problem throwing this out if it's not scientifically logical/reasonable.

"A virus or some sort of microbial parasite. That would act on the bone marrow (where all types of blood cells are produced) and increase immensely the strength and range of their immune system - thus the slow aging and also the craving for human blood."

A virus or such acting on bone marrow to prolong aging... that's good. I like that. A virus that causes you to need to drink blood and acts on bone marrow. Interesting...

The question I still need to answer, of course, is why the need to drink blood? In lore, it's because they're dead, so their heart's not beating. But in this case I can't say they're really dead... I gotta figure out what the virus would do to blood-flow and/or the heart to cause the need for blood.

"If I was a vampire - i'd find a job at a blood bank...."

So would I. I'd even anonymously buy blood from them. Keep it as legal as possible and make sure there are no unwilling victims. I'd probably also follow any research into a cure very closely... even with super strength and speed, I could not imagine living for that long... I really wouldn't want to. Plus, the whole drinking blood thing's a turn-off...

Okay... I need to be clearer. I avoided putting the story here because this group is about science. The story has absolutely nothing to do with the scientific explanation of the vampire. I want that because I don't want a supernatural basis for it only.

The story is cliche: it's horror: a twisted romance/kidnap/revenge story. There are no "good guys" in this one, either. There are two evil people, and one person who is quite a bit more evil and is, in fact, the reason the vampire is as evil as she is.

It's basically this... these two boys (let's say... Brian and Jack) watch when very young as their parents are torture and killed (no, I don't know why... I haven't fleshed this out, yet). But anyways... this experience twists their minds. Instead of becoming foster children, they move into this abandoned warehouse. Once in, they start kidnapping animals and torturing them to death. Now, Jason has a line he will not cross, and that is he won't hurt human beings. Tim does not draw that line, but doesn't do it anyways at first. Now, they are attending school at this time, lying about having parents and all that. Yeah, they could get caught, but I'm not doing that because this is all short and is just basic background for the story, and the background will require some suspension if disbelief (including two kids managing to get through school lying about having parents and being twisted as they are... not realistic, but trying to be realistic adds too many inessentials to the background).

After some time, Jason starts to integrate himself back into normal society, and even applies for the local college. At first, he and Jack, who's fled to somewhere else at this point (or for some reason is no longer there), stay in touch by sending each other videos (first VHS, but then DVD) in plain manila envelopes with just their name on the front (address on back) of what they did to animals. Brian admits on his last video to Jack that he wants to quit... that things are changing for him and he's considering going to a psychiatrist.

While at college, he sees and falls in love with this girl (let's call her Melanie). They get to talking and so on. And she falls for him. However, he decides to be honest about himself to her, so he tells her his entire story. It freaks her out... a lot. But instead of being mean about it, she's nice and just admits that she needs some time. To prove to her that he's changed, he buys a Siberian Husky puppy. She sees him playing with the dog and he gives her the dog as a gift. He and the dog end up becoming"friends", in fact, despite one lapse where he's holding a kitchen knife and staring at the dog...

They start dating. Things are hunky dory for about 6 months until both Melanie and the dog disappear. Two days later the dog shows up utterly mutilated... and dead. Thinking this may have been what happened to Melanie, this pushes Jack over the edge. Official searches for Melanie happen for a month, but eventually they simply give her up as dead. Jack decides to keep looking, though. And for a few months, nothing...

One day, he bumps into a vampire... actually, he sees her feeding off of a homeless guy. She notices him when done and walks over to him. He swears he's found Melanie. This vampire looks exactly like Melanie in every single detail, and even has her voice... but not her personality. Melanie was good... this vampire is evil... very evil. This vampire refers to herself with a different name (let's say Lilith for now), and denies even knowing who he (Brian) is. She does, however, admit that there is a month missing from her life... a few months ago, in fact. A whole month that she has no recollection of.

At their second encounter, she mutilates one of the gangs that hangs around in alleyways, basically because she and Brian were walking down the alley and the gang wanted to rape her. Cops and a detective (let's call him Jimmy) show up. She's looking at Brian when the detective speaks up, and for a brief second after hearing his voice, she shows not just fear, but all-out terror... but it disappears almost as quickly as it shows up. She laughs and goofs with the detective. The cops want to arrest her, but the detective advises against it... obviously. Instead, Brian and Melanie walk away free, and the cops have to clean up the mutilated bodies.

Anyways... this starts a sexual fling. He keeps up with her, and even brings her food sometimes, and she does what she does, although every now and then she'll drop a hint that she does, in fact, remember him. they begin to travel together for the most part. For some reason that she doesn't understand, seeing Brian again has driven a desire in her to "go home"... that is, back to where she and Brian dated.

During this trip back, they have some more encounters with the detective. At the fourth encounter, he promises that he's close to figuring out how to kill her... her reaction to this is fear. Brian finally asks her why she's so afraid of the detective, she admits that she doesn't know, but that she thinks it has something to do with the missing month.

So, finally, they get back "home", and rent a hotel. The next day, Melanie's out finding blood and Brian is going back to the hotel room. When he gets there, he notices a plain manila envelope with his name on it. He takes it in. Melanie is in the hotel. Brian takes a DVD out of the manila envelope and puts it in his laptop. And he starts to watch it.

What he sees on it is what happened to Melanie during that missing month. And... well... it's not pretty. It's in fact why she's so warped. It also reveals that the person doing this to her is the detective... who we now learn is Jack. Melanie sees him watching this and flips out. She destroys his laptop then jumps out the hotel window (breaking the glass). Brian follows her to the abandoned warehouse where he and Jack first started doing their little mutilations. Melanie's already there when Brian walks in, and they get into a physical fight. Of course, since Melanie's a vampire, Brian stands no chance. She keeps telling him to leave, but he refuses, even though she hurts him each time he does... then they hear Jack's voice. At first he still sounds like a detective ("you've killed enough people, little girl" and "I have to bring you in"), but when he hears Brian trip over something, he loses the facade entirely and becomes his evil self.

He finds them, and Brian and Jack begin to fight. They manage to make it up to a balcony while fighting. It quickly becomes obvious that while Brian can fight, Jack is much better. In fact, he stabs Brian and sends him falling to the floor of the warehouse. Melanie goes after him and, not wanting Brian to die, turns him into a vampire. She's more then done when Jack gets down there, and he and Brian go at it again. This time, Brian has the upper hand, but it's Melanie who kills Jack, by ripping out his throat and lower jaw.

Now this next part is yet another thing that I want for horror purposes, but it's gotta not be really supernatural. While walking away, they both here this scraggly breath, almost as if it was seriously coarse sandpaper that was breathing. They both turn around, and they see Jack slowly sitting up. He turns to them and looks at them, then picks up his throat and jaw and puts them back on. So Jack is a vampire.

Now the fight is different. Melanie backs off. She has lost the vampire personality (Lilith), and is back to being just Melanie. Jack and Brian fight. They're evenly matched now, since neither's had blood. The fight is intense enough to take them through a wall of the warehouse and outside. They continue fighting until, due to some mishap which I haven't figured out yet, Jack manages to sink his fangs into a young girl, and Brian can't stop him. This makes Jack superior, again, and Jack ultimately wins the fight, impaling Brian in a wooden poll sticking out of the wall in the warehouse.

He looks at Brian and laughs as Melanie walks up to him from behind... now as Lilith again, she grabs Jack's head and, with a number of twists, manages to rip it off. Then she burns the body & head. While the body's burning, Melanie disappears and Brian passes out. He's woken up by Melanie breaking the pole and getting him off of it, and he sees a guy tied up. Melanie tells him to drink and he'll heal, and he does.

The end of the movie is simply Melanie explaining all that happened, and also explaining why she doesn't blame Brian; that, in fact, she and Jack had met in a Blockbuster (I'm considering it being over Eddie Murphy's "Delirious" or "Raw", or perhaps Bill Hicks's "Sane Man") two weeks before she met Brian, and Jack had already picked her out as a target then. She also explains how she was turned and saved by a vampire whom Jack mistakenly thought was a regular human. She also explains everything Jack did to her, and what he didn't do.

And that's it... that's the story. Like I said... it's very cliche and it's been done, but I want to do it as a vampire movie.

The whole scientific thing is only because I don't want any supernatural things in this. I just want a scientific explanation for my vampires. That's all.